An Evening of Long Goodbyes (24 page)

‘Yes, Dad. Except it’s the holidays now.’

‘Well of course, yes, good fellow… where was I? Oh yes – the thing is that the world isn’t like a swimming pool, you know, where everybody’s splashing around in the same water, you know, in their togs. It might look that way, but in fact –
in fact
,’ he brought up his finger for emphasis, the abruptness of the motion almost unbalancing him, ‘there’s
another
swimming pool, a tiny little one, and the people in
it
are the ones who make the…’ He blinked deliberately. ‘It’s like – what’s the name of that fellow in
Flash Gordon
, the baddie?’

‘Ming the Merciless?’

‘Yes, him. Well, take the folks in this room. They mightn’t look like much more than a bunch of old fogies, but if you add them together, they run the show just like Ming does in… whatever his place is called.’

‘Mongo.’

‘Right, Mongo. So as I say, although this might
look
like a party, where you might have a bit of fun, it’s actually more like work, because this is where all the people from the small swimming pool make their deals and decisions. So it’s very important that we’re nice to them, nice and polite, and we let them eat all our food. Second nature to a woman like your mother, of course. Grew up in a place like this, all the great and good, all splashing around…’

I had never heard Father speak this way before. It was a bit like when the babysitter lets you stay up and watch a horror film – too strange and scary to actually enjoy, but at the same time unquestionably a unique opportunity, so you stay quiet and don’t draw attention to yourself. His voice was loud and puffing, but his speech was somehow becoming dimmer now, and his face was starting to sag. ‘Splashing around… pluck ideas from a dreamland of Beaujolais and that revolting cheese and dump it on the unsuspecting… Wives at me for free cosmetics, should call the next line bloody Lazarus, ha ha…’

‘Dad?’ pulling on his hand.

He looked down, the white collar of his shirt too tight beneath his surprised red face.

‘How’s that brioche?’ he said.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, quickly chewing off a piece because I was discovering at that very moment that I wanted to cry.

‘Caterers ought to be shot.’ He laughed again, and his brow unfurrowed. ‘See the tennis today? That Lendl? He’s something, isn’t he?’

‘Yes, but Boris Becker’s going to beat him.’

‘Boris Becker, listen, my boy, the day a red-haired German – a red-haired German, that’s all wrong for a start – the day a red-haired German teenager wins Wimbledon, I will personally eat my hat. Germans can’t play grass-court. They’re too analytical. For grass you need an artist. Pancho Gonzales, ever see him play? Now there was a man. Beautiful to watch. That’s what it’s all about. Or take cricket. Who’s the greatest bowler of all time?’

‘I don’t know. Underwood?’

‘To the untrained eye, perhaps, but if you want a true craftsman you need to go right back to Rhodes. Took over four thousand wickets, he had this funny sort of a spin, he – well, I’ll show you, come on.’ Taking me by the hand, he led me out of the room and down the hall. ‘“
The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told
”, know who said that?’

‘Yeats?’

‘Goodlad.’ He was impressed. Opening the front door, ‘Bugger, it’s raining – well, we’ll just go out for a minute, you’re wearing shoes aren’t you?’

I followed him, disorientated, down the steps to the front lawn and stood shivering in a late-night drizzle while he ran about assembling a wicket from two wine bottles and a frisbee. Then he bounded back into the house to fetch the bat and ball. ‘Here’s the line, all right?’ He dug his heel into the grass and scraped out a muddy mark. ‘You bat first. Now here’s how they say old Rhodes used to do it –’

He hung his jacket on somebody’s wing mirror, and began a long, lolloping run. His shirtsleeve shuttled up his wrist as his arm came round in an arc and the ball flew from his hand; I shook the tiredness and the strangeness of it from my eyes and drew the bat protectively to my shins as the ball materialized before me –

‘Bravo!’ Father clapped, jogging up to me. ‘Not bad at all. Now you have a turn.’

I’d rescued the ball from the undergrowth and was just about to start my run-up when a silhouette appeared in the doorway and inquired as to what, exactly, we thought we were doing.

‘We’re having a very important philosophical debate,’ Father said, touching his bat off the ground. ‘We’re righting wrongs.’

‘Would it be too much to ask for you to do it inside?’ Mother said icily.

‘In a minute.’

Mother’s arm dropped from the lintel to fold tightly across her chest. ‘People are wondering where you are,’ she said, and then, ‘your
guest
will be getting lonely.’

‘Come on, Charles, let’s see what you have.’ He motioned me to deliver the ball; obediently I started to run.

‘We wouldn’t want her to start
frowning
, and jeopardize her lucrative career,’ Mother said from the doorway in a wicked singsong voice. ‘What would your insurance think of that?’

‘
Christ!
’ he turned and roared, his bow tie askew, ‘I said in a minute, didn’t I, can’t you see I’m with the bloody boy –’

Mother brought her right foot down on to the next step and screamed, ‘You can’t even get that right, can you? You don’t speak to him for weeks on end and then you keep him up half the night because you suddenly feel
paternal
–’ She flinched back as he hurled the bat in her direction. It clattered on to the gravel and slid under a car. Mother span on her heel and stamped back inside, slamming the door behind her. I retrieved the bat and waited. Father was standing under a tree, rubbing his temples.

‘Dad, do you want me to bowl?’

‘Sorry, what?’

‘Are you ready, or –?’

‘Tell you what, let’s call it a night, old chap. Your mother’s right, it’s time you were in bed.’ He sighed as he trudged over towards me. He patted my head and turned to look out over the bay. He jingled the keys in his pocket and cleared his throat, and after we had looked at the bay some more he said, ‘The thing is, Charles, that life is a lot like cricket. The wicket is… no, well, listen, anyway, it’s… life’s a nasty business, can be a nasty business…’ His breath nearly knocked me down. ‘What I want is for you and your sister, for you and Christabel… I don’t want you to have to claw through the, the
shit
, do you understand?’

He never swore in front of us; my heart pounded with alarm. ‘Yes, Dad.’

‘“
Unshapely things
”, remember that. World’s full of unshapely things. Some of ’em’ll look shapely enough, though. Some’ll be quite alluring. So you can’t listen to anybody. And what you’ve got to do, is… what you’ve got to do…’ He stopped, seeming to lose his thread; turned away from me and shambled back towards the house, pulling at his jaw, lost in his own thoughts. So I never found out what it was I had to do; I could only take my best guess. And closing the door of the recital room gently behind me twenty-odd years later, I had to admit to myself that it was quite conceivable I had got it wrong.

One of Bel’s actor-friends had taken the piano and was tinkling out a melancholy ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ as, with my suitcase in my hand, I proceeded down the hall. Voices fell in for the parts they knew: ‘
There’s a land that I dreamed of
…’ I walked by the glass frieze of Actaeon down to the door and surveyed my lost kingdom through a fine, sifting rain: the forlorn trees the birds had deserted, the twisted iron lattice where the Folly had been.

Would the Twister that had seized our lives never set us down in Kansas again, in good old black and white? Or couldn’t you ever go back? Was that only for fairy tales, was the real world everybody got so excitable about precisely this gaudy Techni-colour, this relentless, senseless propulsion?

‘
Birds fly over the rainbow
,’ the voices filtered out from inside, ‘
why then, oh why can’t I
?’

Numbly I descended from the porch. I passed Frank’s van there among the Saabs and Jaguars, and wondered briefly if I’d ever see him again. Then, retrieving a squashed canapé from my pocket, I took the first dark, rain-laden steps of my life away from Amaurot.

7

‘This really is awfully good of you.’

‘No bother, Charlie, no bother.’

‘I mean, it’ll only be for a week or so, until I get myself sorted out…’

‘This is us here, Charlie.’

‘Aha, yes.’ We stopped outside a plain white wooden door. I hummed nervously to myself as Frank rummaged for the key.

‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Age before beauty.’

‘Ha ha, thank you,’ edging into the gloom. ‘Oh. Well. Isn’t this…?’

‘It’s a bit of a mess. I didn’t get much chance to tidy up.’

‘Not at all, not at all, it’s quite – oh dear, I seem to have stepped in someone’s, ah, someone’s dinner…’

‘Don’t worry about it, Charlie, I wasn’t goin to eat any more of it.’

‘Oh good, good. More of an
atelier
, really, isn’t it? I say, is it always this dim?’

‘Hang on, I’ll turn on the box.’ He pushed past me and pressed a button on an ancient television that squatted in a corner. After a moment two women in bikinis appeared, taking swipes at each other with large foam clubs. ‘Don’t worry, your eyes get used to it after a while.’

‘Yes, yes, of course…’

‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

‘Thanks.’ I lowered myself gingerly on to the edge of an armchair. Its guts spilled out of a rent in its side. I sat with my legs pressed tight together and tried not to touch anything. The floor was conspicuously sticky and when you looked at it out of the corner of your eye appeared to be moving.

‘How do you like it?’ Frank’s voice called from somewhere within a teetering wilderness of junk.

‘Just milk, please,’ I replied faintly. There was an overpowering smell in the air, a kind of vastly amplified version of the one that followed Frank around. A magazine entitled
Tit Parade
rested on the coffee table, the young lady on the cover entirely naked save for some carefully positioned citrus fruits. ‘
Grocer Greta’s Grabulous Melons
’, it said.

Frank re-emerged with a couple of mugs. ‘There you go,’ he said, handing one to me and depositing himself upon a dysmorphic sofa opposite. ‘So,’ holding his arms outstretched, like Kubla Khan welcoming Marco Polo to Xanadu, ‘what do you think?’

‘Nice,’ I croaked. ‘Very nice.’

‘Home sweet home,’ he said fondly, and slurped his tea.

‘Although…’ I began.

‘Yeah?’

‘Well, I have to say,’ I said, in a careless, jokey sort of way to show there were no hard feelings, ‘I don’t think much of your doorman.’

‘Doorman?’ Frank repeated.

‘Yes, the doorman,’ I said, trying to maintain my smile. ‘You know, he was really quite slovenly.’

‘That wasn’t a doorman, Charlie, he’s homeless.’

‘Homeless?’

‘Yeah, he lives in that cardboard box on the steps.’

‘Oh,’ I said in a small voice. ‘I wondered why he wasn’t wearing a cap.’

There was a pause. ‘Doorman,’ Frank chuckled to himself.

Light struggled in through the ungenerous window, weak grey light that was more like the residue of light. I looked down thoughtfully into my tea, which had bits in it. After a time I said judiciously, ‘I imagine that’s why it’s taking him so long to bring up my cases.’

Frank put his cup down, wincing. ‘Ah, Charlie…’

‘You don’t suppose,’ I ventured, ‘he might have forgotten which room –’

But Frank had already leapt from his seat and was hurtling back down the stairs. I got up and hurried after him, catching up outside the front door, where he stood studying the cardboard box and blanket until a short while ago occupied by the homeless person/doorman. ‘Fuck,’ he said, stroking his chin.

‘He’s gone,’ I said superfluously. The street was empty save for two moon-faced children watching us from the kerb opposite. One was standing in a supermarket trolley, the other gripped the handle; both were entirely motionless.

‘Come on,’ Frank poked me in the ribs and took off down the street. We reached a crossroads dominated by two huge breezeblocks of flats, where we took a left past a vacant lot overgrown with weeds and burned-out cars and came to a long concrete bunker with metal shutters. I padded after Frank to the door, where he stopped.

‘What? Is he in here?’

‘Charlie,’ he said gravely. ‘You must never, ever,
ever
go in here, all right?’

‘Fine,’ I squeaked. He went inside, and I waited there, whistling tunelessly with my hands in my pockets, attempting to blend in with my surroundings. It was hard to tell which buildings had people in them. The shop windows were covered with heavy grilles. In some of the blocks clothes were hanging out on balcony washing-lines, but the doors were boarded up and covered in graffiti. Others seemed in such a state of disrepair as to be uninhabitable by man or beast – and then one would hear a radio from an upper level, or a child would pop its head out to spit down on to the pavement.

After what seemed a long time, Frank re-emerged. In his hand he held a single suitcase, which he said the patrons of the pub had kindly agreed to sell back to him for only a small profit after he’d told them how I’d mistaken a homeless drug addict for a doorman.

‘Oh,’ I said, and to hide my despair: ‘That place is a pub?’

It was called the Coachman; there had been a sign, but someone had stolen it. ‘You prob’ly seen it on telly,’ Frank said, as we trudged back up the hill. ‘It’s on the news a good bit.’

‘Did anyone say anything about the rest of my things?’ I asked sadly, shaking the lighter-than-it-had-been suitcase.

‘No.’

‘I wonder where they are.’

‘Dunno,’ Frank said equably. ‘Gone.’

It started to rain again.

‘I don’t suppose there’s any point contacting the authorities…’

‘They don’t really come out here any more, Charlie.’

‘Oh.’ The water was soaking into my bandages, making my head feel tight and cold.

‘Well,’ I reflected – I was trying to keep a stiff upper lip about this as long as he was watching – ‘I daresay that homeless chap needs the money a lot more than I do.’

‘I’d say he’s just goin to buy smack with it.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘He’s not a bad bloke, like, once you don’t ask him to mind stuff for you.’

‘Right.’ We turned back down his street. The moon-faced children were standing where we had left them. Frank unlocked the door and I looked ruefully down at the box and grubby blanket. On the door-jamb someone had written, in small defiant black letters,
ARM THE HOMELESS
.

‘Home sweet home,’ Frank said, and went inside.

Something struck me on the back of the head. I turned to see a small grey pebble at my feet. The moon-faced children grinned at me mockingly from their trolley. I followed Frank inside.

And so it was that I arrived at Apt C, Sands Villas, Bonetown.

My first port of call after walking out of Amaurot that night had been the Radisson in Mount Merrion, where I had taken a suite. The hotel boasted a sauna and a pool and did an excellent Dover sole, all of which went some way to comforting me in those traumatic first days away from home. I found out that an old pal of mine, Boyd Snooks, happened to have a room going in his house as of next week; I called him up, and he promised to reserve it for me. Boyd was a jovial, freewheeling sort of fellow, who in school had been famous for his ability to turn his eyelids inside out; and now, although I was under a cloud rather about leaving Amaurot, he persuaded me there were high times to be had
chez lui
. The lower floor of his house was shared by three young air hostesses, also jovial and freewheeling and, according to Boyd, partial, moreover, to the odd game of strip poker in their free time.

‘I don’t know,’ I’d said. ‘It’s just that I hate leaving Bel…’

‘Air hostesses, Charles,’ he said huskily. ‘SAS. Know what that is? It’s the Swedish national airline. They’re
Swedish
, Charles. And they’re all terrible poker players, they get drunk and forget the rules…’

In short, everything had seemed to be going terribly well, and I even began to wonder if I had been mistaken about the rigours of life in the real world. That said, I still spent the best part of my stay sitting in my room in case Mother should call wanting to apologize and begging me, her only son, to forget all that nonsense about getting a job and come back home. But she didn’t, and by the end of the week I was looking forward to the move just so I could be shed of the hotel. Pool and Dover sole notwithstanding, it was deathly dull there; also I was getting rather concerned about the inroads it must be making on my finances. I hadn’t bothered to ask how much the suite cost when I checked in, but I suspected it was a lot, especially for a man with a discontinued allowance. I hadn’t seen my bank balance in quite a while, but every time I thought about it I got a queer, cold feeling, as if someone had walked over my grave.

I ought to mention as well that there had been a minor unpleasantness with some of the other guests after I frightened a small girl one evening in the bar, and I was beginning to feel my presence was no longer quite so welcome. It had all been perfectly innocent – I’d had a drink or two and, momentarily forgetting my hideous disfigurement, thought it might be funny to surprise her by popping out from behind a pillar. But she hadn’t seen the funny side, in fact the hotel doctor had had to give her a sedative, and then on top of everything she turned out to belong to Americans, who are always so dreary when it comes to a chap frightening their children. The long and the short of it was that they’d complained to the concierge, and he’d decided I was a Bad Element and wanted me out ASAP. I got this from the chambermaid, after I cornered her one morning to find out why she’d stopped leaving those little complimentary mints on my pillow.

The upshot of all this was that by eight o’clock the evening before I was due to depart, I had my suitcases, which Mrs P had sent over from Amaurot, packed, and Frank enlisted to pick me up in his van next day at ten and help me with the move. I was lying on the bed drinking a miniature bottle of crème de menthe when the telephone rang. ‘Mr Snooks for you,’ the receptionist said.

There was a problem with the room. ‘The chap leaving’s come down with a cold,’ Boyd said. ‘He’s had to postpone his move.’

‘Oh damnation,’ I said.

‘Beastly thing,’ he said adenoidally. ‘We’ve all got it. Still, he should be better and buggered off in a week or two. Hope it doesn’t put you out too much.’

‘I suppose it can’’t be helped,’ I said; and as he didn’t sound too well himself, I told him not to worry and that I would make other arrangements.

‘That’s the spirit,’ Boyd said, stifling a sneeze. ‘Think of the air hostesses.’

I set down the receiver and bit my lip. The denuded minibar gazed at me accusatorily from the other side of the room. This was a blow, all right. I went and retrieved my address book, and spent the next half-hour calling up acquaintances to see if they could help me out. I had no success. Those that hadn’t, like Pongo, decamped to London, were living in Dublin in mortal terror of their landlords – tyrannical, Victorian fiends who wouldn’t let them so much as hang a picture-frame, let alone entertain house guests. ‘Sorry, Charles,’ they’d mutter down the line, then, urgently, ‘I have to go.’

Finally it appeared there was no alternative but to swallow my pride and call home. Mother answered the phone, needless to say. ‘
Charles
, how
sweet
of you to call, I was just saying this very
second
to Mrs P how must you be doing. You know I still can’t quite believe you’ve flown the nest, we all miss you
terribly
–’

‘Really?’ I said. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so humiliating after all. ‘Because actually…’ and I explained about Boyd and my predicament.

There was an uneasy silence when I had finished. When she spoke again Mother’s voice had taken on the quasi-tragic, overcompensatory tone she used when someone had thoughtlessly left her in a difficult position. ‘Oh dear… that is a pickle,’ she said. ‘But don’t you know we’re rather swamped at the moment, darling. You know the play starts in town tonight and then… well, we thought that seeing as you’re not here –’

‘You haven’t put the Disadvantaged in my room, I hope,’ I cut in abrasively. ‘I don’t want my bed infested with nits and what have you.’

‘Why, no, not the Disadvantaged,’ she said silkily. ‘We thought we’d give your room to Harry, actually.’

She waited a moment, and then when I hadn’t said anything added brightly, ‘There’s the couch, of course, you can always sleep there, if you’re stuck… Or perhaps one of your friends has a spare bed?’

‘Oh yes,’ I said through clenched teeth, as if it had just occurred to me. ‘That’s a good idea. I’ll ring around.’

‘Do call, darling, if you’re still stuck.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘This is your time, Charles. You’ve spread your wings, and now you must fly high, you know we’re all terribly proud –’

I put the phone down. Harry! I felt my blood bubble with rage. That jackanapes, with his Trojan horses and his offbeat hairstyle, he was the golden boy now, was he? I picked the phone up again, and dialled reception to tell them I wanted to extend my stay.

‘Certainly, sir,’ the girl said. ‘Room number, please.’

I gave her my room number. She put me on hold.

‘Mr Hythloday?’ she said, returning.

‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry, sir, but we’re booked up.’

‘Just a single? For one night even?’

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

The concierge had got there first! I was beginning to get the unpleasant sense of being caught up in some sort of mechanism over which I had no control: as if, in leaving Amaurot, I had submitted myself entirely to the whims of Fate, and I could do nothing but follow on docilely until it had brought me where it wanted. I took the last Baileys from the refrigerator under the mirror, poured it into a plastic glass and went to the window. The Radisson had a couple of acres of park around it; the land had used to belong to a convent. Perhaps this was where the nuns would play rounders and tip-the-can on sunny days.

There was nothing for it: I would have to find another hotel, preferably a cheap one. I still had a couple of credit cards left I could use. I returned to the locker side of the bed, picked up the phone again and dialled Frank’s number to tell him the move was off.